How FSA food hygiene ratings actually work (and where they break)

You’ve seen the green-and-black stickers on the windows of restaurants, pubs and takeaways across the UK. A “5”, maybe a “4”, occasionally a “3”. What you’ve probably never seen is a “0” or a “1” — and there’s a reason for that.

The scheme, in one sentence

The Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (FHRS) is a government-backed, local-authority-delivered inspection programme that awards every food business a score from 0 to 5 based on the hygiene standards observed during an unannounced inspection.

Scotland runs a slightly different version called the Food Hygiene Information Scheme (FHIS), which uses a binary “Pass” or “Improvement Required” outcome instead of the 0-5 scale. Both are administered by the Food Standards Agency and both are in our dataset.

Who actually does the inspecting

Environmental Health Officers (EHOs) work for local councils — not the FSA itself. Each of the 317 local authorities in England, plus the equivalents in Wales and Northern Ireland, employ their own EHOs who carry out unannounced inspections on food businesses within their patch.

This matters because it introduces natural variation. A very busy EHO covering 400 venues single-handedly will inspect less often, and sometimes less thoroughly, than an EHO in a well-resourced district with 200 venues. The FSA publishes guidance to standardise scoring, but human judgment remains part of the process.

What they check

An inspection looks at three broad areas:

Food hygiene and safety practices — how food is stored, prepared, cooked, cooled and reheated. Temperature control, cross-contamination risks, allergen handling.
Structural compliance — the state of the kitchen and premises themselves. Cleanliness, maintenance, pest control, layout, ventilation.
Confidence in management — whether the business can demonstrate a written food safety management system, keep records, train staff and maintain standards between inspections.

Each area is scored. The three scores are combined into the final 0-5 rating using a matrix defined by the FSA.

The catch with “5”

A rating of 5 means the inspector found the business in “very good” condition on the day of the inspection. It does not mean:

The business has been 5-rated continuously
The business will still be 5-rated next year
Every branch of a chain with a 5 is also 5

Ratings are a snapshot, not a running assessment. A restaurant can score a 5 in February and be closed for food poisoning in August — and we’ll see that reflected in the next inspection’s score, not the one on the sticker.

This is why we display the date of the last inspection on every venue page at RatingCafe. A 5 from six months ago is much more reassuring than a 5 from three years ago, even though the sticker looks identical.

The problem with England

In Wales (since 2013) and Northern Ireland (since 2016), displaying the FSA sticker at the entrance is legally mandatory. Refuse to display, and your local authority can fine you.

In England, the display is voluntary. The FSA has campaigned for mandatory display for over a decade, and successive governments have declined to legislate. The result is exactly what you’d expect: venues with high ratings display proudly, venues with low ratings quietly don’t.

Research commissioned by the FSA (Ipsos MORI 2019) found that only 30% of English venues with a rating of 1 or 0 displayed their sticker, compared to 85% of venues with a 5. In effect, the English public gets a biased sample.

How to check any venue

The FSA publishes the full national dataset as open data — including every single score, displayed or not. You have three options to check a venue:

Direct on FSA — ratings.food.gov.uk — the official, canonical source
On RatingCafe — we mirror the same data and add search, city pages, chain aggregation
Via your local authority’s website — most councils also publish

If you spot a discrepancy between RatingCafe and the FSA site, it’s either because we haven’t refreshed yet (we update daily) or because your venue’s most recent inspection hasn’t been published by the FSA yet. In both cases, the FSA site wins — they are the authority, we are a wrapper.

Where the scheme genuinely helps

Despite its flaws, the FHRS has substantially raised baseline food hygiene across the UK since its introduction in 2010. FSA evaluations have shown measurable improvements in scores year-on-year, and the existence of a public rating does change behaviour — venues that know they’re being scored do a better job.

The goal of RatingCafe isn’t to criticise the scheme. It’s to make the data as visible as it should already be, especially in England.

Sources

Food Standards Agency — Food Hygiene Rating Scheme overview
Food Standards Agency — How ratings are worked out
Open Government Licence v3.0 — terms
FSA — research publications on the FHRS

Reviewed by: James Thornton, food safety & regulatory journalist. Last fact-check: 14 April 2026.